


Last Stop: This Town

by PazithiGallifreya



Series: Writing the Future [2]
Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Don't copy to another site, Gen, flagrant abuse of physics concepts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24921502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PazithiGallifreya/pseuds/PazithiGallifreya
Summary: A sequel to my previous story "The Persistence of Memory" - Marty wraps up loose ends
Relationships: Emmett "Doc" Brown & Marty McFly
Series: Writing the Future [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1803457
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Last Stop: This Town

_You're dead but the world keeps spinning_  
_Take a spin through the world you left_  
_It's getting dark a little too early_  
_Are you missing the dearly bereft?_

_..._

_What if I was not your only friend_  
_In this world_  
_Can you take me where you're going_  
_If you're never coming back_

\- "Last Stop: This Town" - Eels

* * *

“Great _Scott!_ ”

It had been a dire miscalculation. He'd meant for them to arrive several days later. He'd considered the possibility that he had... well not he, _himself_ , exactly, but his counterpart, that is to say.... Even his thoughts were rambling, now, running into one another like train cars piling up after the engine derailed, but in his defense, it was a lot to take in.

Split time streams. Parallel histories. Marty had been the first to suggest it, during an emotional outburst the previous year that at the time he had sympathized with but not entirely understood. Marty had come to the conclusion not through scientific inquiry, but through a surprisingly accurate sort of intuition that Emmett suddenly envied. In hindsight it should have been obvious to him as well, but he'd been distracted with other matters then, having just arrived back in the 20th century after years in the 19th, and despite Clara's warnings, he had let it go to work on other problems.

Clearly, he should not have. Marty's memories no longer matched up to his own. Some they shared, but many they did not. His Marty had worked for him from the age of fifteen. This Marty had recollections of a working relationship and eventual friendship beginning several years prior, when he was just shy of eleven years old. Emmett's own history was more or less straightforward, but this young man's was a patch-job of sorts, ripped from one part of the tapestry of space-time and sewn (badly) onto another. What had happened to _his_ Marty, then, the one he'd hired as a lab assistant at fifteen? A question for another day.

Eventually Emmett's curiosity had been piqued by the paradox of Marty's incongruous memories, and the task of finding a way to move not forward or backward, but _sideways_ in time, had been too tempting for the scientist to resist. Parallel universes were hardly Emmett's own original thought, at least. Physicists had debated the idea back in the fifties; Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics was known well enough, even if it had never been proved.

But then Marty had returned from a successful tour along the east coast with his band. One evening, while sitting in Emmett's recently finished new family home and staring into the fireplace after supper, Marty had idly mentioned that he still missed his family - his original family - despite all of their flaws and failures. Once it became possible to see them again, he'd quickly accepted Emmett's offer to test out his new device.

I really need to stop using my best friend as a test pilot, he thought, as he stared at the wreckage in front of him. It was something akin to an out-of-body experience as he stared across the asphalt at Marty practically howling in grief, crouched over a prone figure. _Did I truly look that old and frail before the rejuvenation therapy?_

Sirens wailed in the distance as emergency vehicles approached. The gunfire must have drawn attention from the surrounding suburbs. Emmett had just enough time to realize he definitely wouldn't have time to concoct a believable story about his identity, and slipped away into darkness, crouching out of sight as his counterpart was pulled onto a gurney and loaded into the back of an ambulance. Marty jumped in after the EMTs without so much as glancing back and Emmett didn't quite know how to feel about that.

* * *

It had been over two years, but Marty's mind slipped right back to that fateful day as though no time had passed at all. The images had never really faded from his mind and had revisited him in nightmares often enough. Doc was still there, right where he'd left him, this dreadful moment in time patiently waiting here for Marty to return. Marty heard a strangled cry from somewhere and a detached part of his mind noted it was his own voice, but he hardly cared. Brown eyes cracked open weakly as Marty knelt down on the hard asphalt. He could feel still-warm blood soaking through his jeans where his knees met the ground. “I'm here, Doc, I came back! I came back...”

Dry lips parted as though Doc wanted to say something, but whatever he might have said was drowned out both by Marty's sobbing as well as the approach of sirens. EMTs swarmed his stricken friend and police officers jerked him to his feet and peppered him with a flurry of questions to which he had no clear answers. He mumbled something about terrorists with automatic rifles, and slipped past the officers as the gurney was loaded into the ambulance.

By the time they arrived at the hospital, Marty McFly's best and oldest friend was gone.

* * *

Marty was further questioned by police at the emergency room, but eventually they let him go with instructions not to leave town any time soon. If he'd failed to mentioned plutonium or any particular reason his friend had been targeted, well, that was grief for you.

The ride home from the hospital took half an hour but felt like a million years. A nurse whose shift was ending gave him too-large scrubs to change into and offered him a ride home. She'd clucked and fussed over him and he supposed he ought to be grateful, but all he really felt was completely numb at the moment, and said nothing as she drove, instead staring out of the window at the passing streetlights in a fog of unreality while clutching a plastic bag holding his blood-stained shirt and jeans.

It was past one in the morning. but his father was still awake, probably working on some stupid project that Biff would take credit for later, when the nurse pounded on the front door.

“Marty?”

“Dad--” He felt his voice crack as his father pulled him inside frantically.

“What the hell happened, son?”

“Doc, he--”

“Are you hurt, Marty?”

“No, I'm not, Dad, but Doc, he's—”

* * *

Marty was dressed like it was still summer, out of habit, even though it was October again, and the chill of the night seeped into his bones. He could go upstairs and change into something else from his closet, but that would require moving. He wasn't a twenty year old touring musician now, but a high school student again whose mother had spent the day awkwardly trying to comfort him and was now passed out on the couch after drinking too much. His brother was working the night shift at Burger King, his sister had already gone to bed, and he wasn't sure what his father was doing at the moment, but it probably had something to do with Biff, who had stopped by earlier in the day to harass George over finishing work that was really his own. Marty might have been tempted to sock Biff in the mouth again for old times' sake, but the numbness of the car ride home had returned to him after he'd spent what felt like ages sobbing into his bewildered father's shoulder before dawn.

“Why did I come back here?”

“You said you missed them, Marty.”

Marty flinched and looked up as Doc emerged from the night to sit down on the front steps beside him, swatting briefly at the moths attracted by the porch light above them. Marty tilted his head to peer askance at Doc for a long moment before scrubbing his hands over his face and sighing deeply.

Doc hesitated a moment, then cleared is throat noisily. “My, ah, counterpart, is there any improv-”

“He's dead. Died in the ambulance before we got to the hospital. Collapsed lung, too much blood loss...” Doc is dead, Marty thought. He's sitting next to me right now, and he is also dead. Both of these things are true. “This is all just way too heavy, Doc. What the hell am I supposed to do? I've been gone for two years, but they don't even know it.” Marty jerked his head back toward the door of his house. “I thought I wouldn't feel like such a stranger anymore if I came home...”

A warm and very much still-living hand rubbed at Marty's back for a moment as a tense silence filled the air between them for several minutes before Doc finally spoke. “I did not intend for us to arrive on that particular day, Marty, believe me. I was aware of the possibility that... Well, navigation across parallel histories is apparently not as easily controlled as linear movement along a discreet timeline. In a sense I think this timeline of yours is not entirely separated from mine, more a sort of conjoined twin, if you will.... and perhaps the moment of divergence is something of a focal point and...” Doc sighed heavily, mirroring Marty's earlier gesture. “And I'm babbling again, and this is not what you need to hear right now. Clara isn't here to remind me when I'm getting off topic, unfortunately. But, Marty, I would never have wanted you to see what you saw yesterday.”

Marty shook his head. “No, Doc, don't apologize. I think... I'm glad I was able to be there with him, in the end. I just wish...”

“You tried to change it, Marty. We both thought you could, remember? I read the letter and acted accordingly, and that is why we are here speaking now. In a sense, Marty, you essentially _created_ me. Or, at least, the time stream which I belong to. Much as I saved Clara, I suppose... time truly is a strange thing, Marty. But, here we are.”

Marty laughed for a moment at the absurdity of it all, of the notion that he had somehow made his own replacement Doc Brown for the one he'd just lost, but the laughter soon collapsed into another bout of tears onto another sympathetic shoulder.

* * *

Emmett wished, again, that he'd had the foresight to bring Clara with him on this venture. He could use her advice at a time like this. He'd found a motel in an inconspicuous corner of town and used one of several false identities he'd concocted over the years to book a room.

It was unlikely Emmett would be mistaken for his deceased counterpart in any event, given that his appearance was a good thirty or forty years younger, thanks to the rejuvenation therapy he'd availed himself of on his first trip to the 21st century. He might pass for a younger brother or cousin. Indeed, he might even be able to get away with attending the funeral as some made-up relative, to support Marty... Emmett shook his head and dismissed the thought. He had planned to lay low for a few days as Marty dealt with what had happened, just as Marty had requested, and would stay with that plan. He wanted to help, but felt he'd already helped Marty perhaps a bit too much recently. He'd at least given Marty the location where his will was stashed away, along with the location of a key to a safety deposit box at the bank in town where he knew a few other important documents were likely to be stashed, provided his own life had not diverged too far from this timeline.

It was odd to think that, for the first thirty five years of his life, this was, in fact, his native timeline, until it was suddenly Not. Marty being sent back to 1955 had created a divergence, one whose center of temporal gravity seemed to be the point of his departure in 1985, something he'd failed to take into account, hence their current situation. He'd have to re-examine the device he'd created, the Time-Slider he'd come to call it, in his own head at least. There had to be a way to adjust for such phenomena. There was much to be investigated, after all – were all parallel timelines the result of such artificially induced divergence, or did an infinite number of them exist as a matter of course? He'd been able to target Marty's native timeline by using Marty himself like a kind of tuning fork, to find the correct temporal signature. Likewise, he'd be able to use himself to get back home. There had to be a way to randomize it, though...

Emmett stretched out on the lumpy mattress in the motel room, staring up at the cobwebs hanging from the corners of the ceiling. _Let's solve one problem before we create another, hmm?_

His life had been dedicated to science, and he'd accepted the myriad risks that came with such esoteric ventures as time travel, but he'd never imagined that he'd eventually be lending a hand in planning his own funeral, after a fashion. Marty had been as faithful a companion as one could ask for in all this, but the young man had also borne the brunt of the consequences of his experimentation with time.

_He was eleven, here, when my counterpart met him, and practically raised him. And now Marty has to bury that man._

Emmett wished, again, that he'd brought Clara along. Emmett had cracked open many of the mysteries of time and space, but the human heart was something he still found mostly mysterious. Clara always seemed to know how to deal with these things.

* * *

Marty didn't know anything about arranging a funeral. He was sitting at Doc's table with his Last Will and Testament laid out before him. Thankfully, it had been in the drawer where ... _other..._ Doc had told him to look. _Even thinking about him – them – is confusing now_.

“Good grief, how did he get anything done in all this chaos?”

Marty glared at Linda where she was all but shoveling stuff into the cardboard boxes that their mother had swiped from behind the liquor store on the way over (along with a quick trip inside for more vodka, and in two years Marty had almost forgotten just how deeply disappointing that was). Linda swept the shelves clear of spare parts and tools and other odds and ends with no care as to the contents or their fate. Linda and his mother had accompanied him to the old garage. That weird numbness had settled over Marty again, all the practical details of dealing with a burial and the disposition of a long and productive life's leftover detritus distracting him, for the moment at least, from an aching chasm that threatened to open up in his heart.

Marty could remember the day so clearly, just before his eleventh birthday, when Needles had dared him to climb over Crazy Old Doc Brown's fence, and he'd nearly killed himself in the process. The strange old man had carefully untangled his coat where it was caught on a bent wire and lowered him down to his feet. Doc had knelt down in front of him and tilted Marty's head back to inspect his bruised throat with gentle fingers. Marty went back the next day, and the day after that, and Doc had let him. Marty had sat on the edge of the workbench, his skinny legs swinging back and forth, while Doc tinkered away at his inventions, and asked endless questions. Some of them were about the work Doc was doing, some were about how the world worked in general, some were about Doc's past and what he'd done and where he'd been and what he'd seen. Doc had answered them, sometimes in greater detail than Marty had ever wanted, but Doc never acted like Marty was a burden or an imposition or a pain in the ass, or something he didn't have time for. After a few months, Doc had even started paying Marty for doing a variety of chores, and for the first time in his life, Marty had pocket money of his own. Moreover, Doc's battered old garage had been a critical refuge for Marty as his parents' marriage and mental health had deteriorated. Linda called it chaos, but to Marty it had been the solitary calm center in the hurricane of his life.

Marty reached down and scratched behind Einstein's ear. The dog huffed and whined, confused why his master wasn't here, no doubt. Marty had arrived earlier to find the dog laying on the concrete driveway outside Doc's gate, having found his own way home. Einstein had been thirsty and hungry and had eaten everything Marty put in his bowl and begged for more. Marty had dumped a second can of dog food in the bowl, and then a third.

Doc Brown had no next of kin. Marty vaguely remembered him mentioning cousins, but Marty had never seen any of them and it did not seem like they had ever been close. Marty had been surprised to find his own name in the will, with a few items left to him which he'd already retrieved and set aside, but the will had on the whole been rather vague on several counts. No preferences regarding final arrangements were stated, for one thing. Marty's father had contacted a funeral home in town, which would be paid out of Doc's estate. Or what was left of it anyway, he'd apparently expended the vast bulk of his inheritance on his experiments over the years and not bothered to purchase life insurance.

The garage and the property it sat on would have to be sold to pay off remaining debts, according to Marty's dad, and the thought made Marty terribly sad all over again as he thought of it being torn down for a convenience store or another fast food joint. The funeral home was the same one that George McFly had used when Marty's paternal grandparents had passed and all Marty remembered of it was that it smelled musty and was depressing as hell. He'd already told his father that he wanted an outdoor graveside service only, as the thought of setting foot in that funeral home again had made his skin crawl. There was a grave plot near an old German Lutheran church across town where Doc's parents were buried, and Marty's Doc would be joining them on Saturday.

Some of the books, inventions, and tools still needed to be boxed up to be sent to Cal Tech as the will requested, and Marty forced himself to his feet to go and retrieve them while Einstein followed. It was a welcome distraction, at least.

* * *

Emmett waited until it was nearly dusk, figuring it would be safer to emerge then. He waited outside Marty's home until he'd ascertained that Marty wasn't there, then went to the garage to find it locked up tight and dark. Peering through the window, he could make out stacks of cardboard boxes and little else. Einstein was nowhere to be found. _Pity, it would have been nice to see the old boy again. Well, a version of him, anyway..._ Emmett's own Einstein, of course, had been a companion to his sons for many years in the 19th century before passing at a respectable old age for a dog.

There was only one other place he could think of to look for Marty, though, and after a moment's hesitation and a twinge of foreboding, he headed across town.

* * *

Emmett remembered the place well enough, although he hadn't visited it in decades. He supposed he ought to have felt some guilt over that, but Doctor Emmett L. Brown had always been a man of the present and the future, and never one to linger over the past, or over the dead.

The sun dipped to the horizon, and the shadows of the headstones cut long columns across the overgrown grass and unkempt graves. He walked down the stone pathway toward the back of the cemetery. He'd last been here when his mother had died, just a few years after he'd also buried his father. A single massive headstone marked the Brown family plot, where his parents and paternal grandparents were buried. Even from this distance, he could see the freshly mounded dirt of a newly filled grave. He suppose another name must now be carved into the granite, or would be soon enough. The dead, though, were not his concern at the moment.

He walked around the graves to find Marty sitting in the dirt, against the back of the headstone. His face was hidden against crossed arms propped on knees, and Einstein was curled up beside him, sleeping. The funeral had been that morning, Emmett thought. Had he sat out here all day?

“Marty!”

There was no response from Marty, but Einstein's head popped up and the dog rushed over to him, licking at his face as Emmett crouched down to pet him for a moment before reaching over to give Marty a shake. Marty finally woke with a start, nearly tipping over. “Doc?”

“Yes, I'm here. I think we need to talk.”

Doc stood up and stepped back to give Marty room. Marty pulled himself up and wobbled on his feet. Doc reached out to grab him by the shoulder and steady him. “Are you alright, Marty?”

“Er, yeah. Just... dizzy.. I think.”

“How long have you been out here?” Emmett held Marty by the shoulders, looking him up and down. He looked unusually pale, Emmett thought.

“I don't know. Most of the day, I guess?”

“No lunch, then?”

“No... didn't really have time for breakfast either. What time is it?”

“Nearly six. You're dehydrated, at the very least. Let's get you home, hmm?”

Emmett kept a hand on Marty's shoulder until he seemed to regain his sense of balance. Einstein trotted along a few steps behind them. They were nearly back to Marty's house when he stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “Doc, if my parents see you... I mean we literally just _buried_ you--”

“If you want, I can pass myself off as one of your Doc Brown's cousins, I look much younger to say the least. But I think perhaps its time to come clean, as it were. Especially if you intend to return with me.” Emmett held his breath for a moment, suddenly wondering whether Marty would be going home with him or not. He'd perhaps taken a few things for granted coming here, one that it would be a short visit for both of them. It now hit him that he might be saying goodbye to Marty again, perhaps forever this time, unless he found a novel means of navigating alternate timelines entirely that didn't rely on having a “native” of the destination timeline on hand. “You _are_ returning with me? I would understand if you'd rather remain here with your family, of course.”

Marty stared up at him, shifting from one foot to another in the dim amber light of the streetlamp, looking more lost than Emmett had ever seen him. “Doc, I...” Marty looked past Emmett at his house further down the street. “I think I'm about ready to go home.”

Emmett felt his heart sink to somewhere in the vicinity of his shoes. “Yes, Marty, of course. I understand, they're your family after all, you--”

“No, Doc, I mean _home_. I want to go back with you. But you're right, I owe them an explanation before we leave. I suppose I can come back again some time for another vist, maybe. But I think I'm done here, you know? I did what I needed to.”

* * *

Marty downed his third glass of water from the kitchen sink before he started to feel significantly better. It had been a shitty few days, however he looked at it. He could hear his parents in the living room arguing with Doc, including their outbursts of disbelief. Marty had decided to leave the technical explanations of time travel and parallel universes to the expert, but it didn't sound like Doc was having too much luck.

He hadn't told his parents he'd be leaving possibly forever, yet. He'd have to, though, as they planned to leave as soon as possible. Doc was anxious to get back to Clara and his children before something else went wrong, and Marty was getting a bad case of déjà vu of those first few months in his changed timeline where everything around him felt like a badly fitting pair of shoes. This was his original timeline, but at some point, it had stopped being home. He hadn't lived in this reality in over two years. Why _had_ he really wanted to return here, anyway? The Pinheads were really taking off, and he and Jennifer had already decided they'd get married once she finished school. And there was Doc – _this_ Doc – and Clara, and of course Jules and Verne who practically worshipped him.

Setting the glass down in the sink, Marty took a deep breath and stepped into the living room. His parents were gaping at Doc, who sat in a chair with a serious but calm look on his face, like a professor dealing with particularly dense students. Maybe he wasn't quite the same man as the one who had taken him in at the age of ten, maybe he wasn't quite the same man that Marty had just buried, but in his heart, he really was the same Doc that Marty had always known, Marty's best and oldest friend.

“Marty, I don't know who this man really is, but he claims--”

Marty held up a hand, stalling his mother's protests before sitting down in the chair next to Doc. “I know what he claims, and it's all entirely true. I know it's only been two days for you and dad, but it's been over two years for me, in the other timeline. My band's doing great, Jennifer and I have plans, and things are good, alright?”

Marty's father stared at him for a long moment. “Marty, son, I want to believe you, but how am I supposed to believe any of this? It sounds like some kind of science fiction novel!”

Marty glanced at his father and stifled a laugh. “It kind of is, I guess? You can have it if you want. In fact, you _should_ write it. I know you used to write science fiction stories when you were a teenager. You could get published, if you put your mind to it. You _did_ get published, actually, over there...”

George McFly gaped at his youngest son. “I never told anyone about--”

“Yeah, I know, you were afraid of being rejected, so you never tried. Well, sometimes you just have to take chances. And by the way, stop letting Biff walk all over you. He's really a total coward, and if you just stand up to him, he'll crumble. I promise. Think about it, alright?”

Marty stood up again. “Mom, Dad, I love you both, and Dave & Linda too, but I can't stay here. This isn't my life anymore. I don't know if I'll ever be able come back, either. But I have to do this.”

Doc pulled himself to his feet as well, and pulled a device from his bag about the size of a large two-way radio. “Just let me know when you're ready, Marty, and we'll be on our way.”

Marty's parents rose as well, standing in the middle of the room looking a bit like a pair of lost children. Marty hugged them both tightly before heading back outside where Einstein was waiting. Doc emerged from the front door a few minutes later.

“I'm not sure they really believe either of us, but I suppose it will have to do. Ready, Marty?”

“I always am, Doc.”

* * *

“You were right, Clara, as usual. Marty has a way of finding solutions before he even quite understands what the problem is, I should have listened more closely, I suppose.”

Emmett's wife smiled softly at him. Marty had packed up to head down to Los Angeles with his band a few days ago. They were no doubt already holed up in a recording studio somewhere. He'd taken his native timeline's Einstein with him, at Emmett's insistence. _He's_ your _Einstein, Marty, not mine. Besides, someone needs to be there to look after you_.

“Well, I did warn you that this was never a mathematics problem for him. I'm sorry you both landed in that horrible mess, but think of it this way - maybe he _needed_ to bury that other version of you, to bury his past, in a sense. It did rather seem to weigh on him. Can you really blame him?”

Emmett snorted. “No, I'm pretty sure I have myself to blame for most of this. Libyan terrorists! Great Scott, what was I thinking?”

“That you wanted your time machine to work, and didn't bother to think too far ahead about how you got it done, I suspect. You do tend to get a bad case of tunnel-vision when you're in the middle of one of your projects.”

“Well, live and learn I suppose. Or die and learn, in this case. I feel rather privileged, you know, to have survived my own death. Isn't quantum mechanics just _fascinating_ , Clara?”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from a song by the Eels, which is a band fronted by Mark Oliver Everett, the son of Hugh Everett III, who first proposed the idea of multiple universes. 
> 
> Look them both up, it's all very Meta, I promise.
> 
> (And the nod to the show Sliders was totally intentional)


End file.
